


beloved body, compass, polestar

by snsk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Saves Cas from the Empty, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Fix-It, Getting Together, M/M, because their narrative demanded it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snsk/pseuds/snsk
Summary: “Thanks,” Dean said distractedly, but his gaze caught on the pillar he’d nearly been backed into when the light and thesomethinghad shoved him aside. There was a sharp long nail there, protruding from the wood. “Sam, did you– did you see that?”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 143





	beloved body, compass, polestar

**Author's Note:**

> in order to move on I had to write this it was therapy

**DEAN**

The way Dean was fighting was all dogged persistence and brute strength. Duck swerve _strike_ and do it over again and don’t think about it. Dean wasn’t thinking about much. Dean wasn’t feeling much. That was the worst thing, because he’d been so excited about getting into a hunt and feeling the wild adrenaline of a fight again. That would at least be something.

He was un-thinking and un-feeling enough when the vamp charged at him that he forgot to dodge. He braced himself for the impact, braced himself for rough wood against his back and the breath knocked out of him, but between one moment and the next _something_ pushed him aside. There was a flash of light so bright that it blinded Dean for a second. The next thing he knew he was on the ground recovering from whatever that _something_ was, and the vamp, who had already gotten back onto its feet, was coming at him.

Sam, faithful as ever, sliced its head off as it advanced upon Dean.

“Thanks,” Dean said distractedly, but his gaze caught on the pillar he’d nearly been backed into when the light and the _something_ had shoved him aside. There was a sharp long nail there, protruding from the wood. “Sam, did you– did you see that?”

“I saw that,” Sam said. “The light–”

“Cas,” Dean said desperately, scrambling to his feet. “Cas, Cas. Are you there? _Cas_.”

“Dean.” Sam sounded scared, but Dean was looking around, striding around the barn, for all the world like Cas would be hiding in a dark corner. “Dean, it was lightning, or something. Cas is–”

He faltered, and Dean knew he didn’t want to say _dead,_ and he didn’t want to say _gone._

“It was something,” Dean said. When he looked back at his brother Sam looked so wary, and that was when Dean realised he was smiling, smiling with bruises forming from the floor and the fight and all the feeling returning to his very veins. “It was him.”

* * *

**SAM**

Of course his protests fell on Dean’s wilfully deaf ears. Of course when Dean felt he could save someone he loved, he would save someone he loved. And of course Dean loved. 

The last few weeks had been a mess of research and fitful sleep and Sam waking up to Dean slumped over books at the table and putting a blanket over him. Sam helped as much as he could, of course. There were powerful spells and invisible portals and ancient ideas of hell to read up on, and Sam, even though he didn’t know if this was possible at all, would help his brother, would do all he could for the slimmest chance of saving Cas. But Dean didn’t just _do research_ : he barely ate, barely talked, and studied as if his life depended on it. Sam didn’t want to think about it, but he figured it probably did.

He tried to feed and water him at regular intervals, and every night he put the blanket over him.

On the fourth Friday after the hunt Dean looked up from his pile of disintegrating old parchment, stolen from an equally ancient library, and said, “We’ve got what we need. We’ve gotta try it.”

“Dean,” Sam protested for what felt like the thousandth time. “It’s not safe.”

Dean’s expression had changed into a familiar manic intensity, Winchesterian in its stubbornness. Sam thought _I can’t stop him_ and, resigned, _if it were Eileen he couldn’t stop me._ So Sam looked at his brother and said, “Okay.”

They made it to the field, near the tree, the site of Anna’s grace. The portal needed to be created where ‘ _witchcrafte moost potent lies sleepyng’,_ and this seemed a good a place as any. Dean, arranging the various ingredients of their spell in a pattern that he’d probably carved into his brain from all the nights at the table, straightened, looked over at Sam, and started chanting.

“Wait,” Sam said.

“Sammy, if you say this isn’t safe one more time–”

“No,” Sam said. “I wanted to say I can’t do this alone.”

Dean met his eyes. “Yes you can,” he said.

“Well, I don’t want to,” Sam said. “So you better get back here, with Cas, in one piece. Or else.”

Over the portal Dean curved a grin over at him. “Or else,” he agreed, and he began chanting. He chanted long, and low, and the portal began to glow.

“See you in a bit, Sammy,” Dean said, and he stepped into it.

* * *

**CAS**

It was quiet. The Empty was quiet, and Cas didn’t know why. It was peaceful, almost, except for the fact that it was _nothing._ It was just Cas and his thoughts.

Once upon a time this would’ve been torture. Nowadays his thoughts weren’t all that bad. The Empty wasn’t peaceful but Cas was. He’d spoken his truth and the Empty wasn’t taking that away from him, and it didn’t seem like it was trying at all.

He hoped Dean was doing okay. He hoped he wasn’t drinking too much. He hoped he wasn’t grieving. Well, he hoped he was grieving a _little_ bit–

“Cas!”

So it seemed that the Empty was finally getting around to remembering that if he wasn’t sleeping he was supposed to be tortured forever.

He focused very hard instead on a very real memory he had. They’d all been in the bunker. Cas had been reading, and when he’d finally looked up from a chapter Dean had been draped across his chair, easy, watching Sam and Jack spar over dinner. He looked so comfortable Cas drank it in: moments like this were precious. It was what they were fighting for.

“What?” Dean said. His smile was loose, one side of it pulled up in the way Cas liked to believe was reserved only for him. 

“Nothing,” Cas said. “I’ve found nothing,” and indicated his book.

“S’alright, Cas,” Dean said, and smiled, and smiled–

“ _Cas,_ you better get your ass over here right now!”

This was some very specific and not very effective torture. Dean when he was angry Cas didn’t particularly long for, so focusing on his memory and tuning out the unreachable voice was easier.

“Casti _el_! You don’t just get to say something like I love you and then leave, that’s some cowardly bullshit right there–”

Now _that_ was different. The Empty used memories, and Dean had never said anything like that. Cas got up, cautious. If this was a new torture alright, fine, they’d reeled him in. 

He walked in the direction the voice had come from.

“Cas!” the voice yelled, infuriated, and Cas walked towards it. He always would.

* * *

**DEAN**

Shouting repeatedly into nothing was harder than it looked. There hadn’t been a game plan for what happened after you got into the Empty. Dean had just figured Cas would come to him. Cas always did.

Cas was just taking his damn time.

But eventually after his voice had grown way past hoarse someone said “Dean?” sounding breathlessly confused, incredibly disbelieving, and Dean wasn’t surprised, he just thought _about time._ Cas always did. 

“Let’s get you out of here, huh?” he said, turning around.

Cas’s blue eyes were so wide, looking at Dean and looking like Dean wasn’t really there. Dean thought about Amelia Novak and how she’d searched for Jimmy for years, and Dean understood, because those eyes would do that to you. “Dean,” Cas said again, wonderingly.

“Well, let’s get out of here, then,” Dean said impatiently. He didn’t like the Empty. Nothingness was unsettling in a way that was worse than Purgatory, perhaps, and he ached to– he didn’t know what he ached to do, but he didn’t want to do it here.

“Very effective,” Cas said, shaking his head and looking away, and Dean realised he thought Dean was one of the Empty’s torturous hallucinations.

So Dean reached forward and took his hand, held it tight. Cas stared at down at where he’d been touched like it was a miracle.

“Hey, what,” Dean said, aiming for teasing. “You don’t believe you deserve to be saved?” 

And because he didn’t trust himself to say anything else without breaking down, he tugged gently, and Cas followed. 

Dean couldn’t see anything. Nothingness wasn’t black, it was like the view behind his eyelids, sparking and vague and not really there. But by sheer force of will and memory he led Cas back to the portal, which glowed faintly in the not-black.

“It can’t be as easy as that,” Cas said from behind him, stopping.

“It’ll just have to be, won’t it?” Dean said, turning to look at him, because it was either they both left this place or they both stayed, and Dean didn’t know about Cas, but he was really starting to hate it here.

Cas’s gaze made its slow way up from the portal to Dean’s face. “Okay then,” he said, and of course he meant, _I trust you_. He stepped into the way home.

And then he started to scream.

* * *

**SAM**

The portal burned, a sudden sharp light that Sam’s eyes couldn’t take; he shut them instinctively and threw his arms up, but he could still see it, could still feel it all around him. Then just as suddenly the light was gone. 

Sam lowered his arms. Dean and Cas were on their hands and knees in front of him, and the portal no longer glowed.

“Ow,” Cas said. “Oh, _ow_.” He was the first to move: he ripped out his coat, and then his shirt, and felt around his shoulder blades. 

“Cas?” Sam said. Dean seemed to be fine: he was kneeling in front of Cas, the line of his back wary and concerned.

“My grace,” Cas said, stunned-sounding. “It’s gone.”

Sam could only see the back of Dean’s head when he said, “I’m so sorry, Cas.”

“I’m human,” Cas said. “For real this time, I think. The Empty kept my grace. That’s why it let me leave.” He looked wide-eyed from Dean to Sam and he didn’t look upset, Sam thought, but Dean sure sounded broken when he repeated, “I’m sorry, Cas.”

“It feels different,” Cas said. “It hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said again. “It was your grace.”

“Oh,” Cas said, focusing on Dean, “oh, I didn’t really need it anyway,” and he smiled, like he was vaguely pleased at making something like a joke.

“Cas,” Dean, said, destroyed.

“Why are you sorry?” Cas asked, sounding genuinely confused. “I'm not sorry. I’m here with you, Dean,” he said, as if this was an explanation, and of course this was when Sam’s brother decided to launch himself at their angel. 

Sam politely looked away at this. He remained patiently staring at the tree after, and he didn’t even clear his throat until a whole fifteen minutes had passed, even as he was hearing things no one needed to hear from family. That was the kind of awesome brother he was, and Dean should be eternally grateful.

* * *

**CAS**

In the Impala back to the bunker, Cas sat in the backseat and caught Dean’s eye in the rearview mirror and felt something flutter madly in the pit of his stomach. He wondered if it was a human digestive system thing or an _I have kissed Dean Winchester_ thing.

“Oh, Cas,” Sam said, who seemed to have made it his life goal to ignore any evidence that anything out of the ordinary was happening in the car. “Four weeks ago, there was a barn– were you there? See, Dean says you were, but if you were in the Empty…”

“I was there,” Cas said. 

“See, I told you,” Dean said, smugly. He turned the music volume up and Sam sighed in a way that was meant to be exasperated but was quite obviously _I’ve got my brother back_ relief.

“How?” he asked.

In the Empty, you slept. It was your eternal slumber, your final rest. There was nothing else but sleep in the empty: sleep, and if you woke, the madness of memories.

But something had woken Cas up, four Fridays ago. Something loud and something ominous, something that had made everything in him anguished. He hadn’t been sure what it was, only that he needed to stop it. He had been pretty sure it was Dean. It always was.

“ _No_ ,” he’d said, and threw the force of everything he was at the anguish. For a moment the Empty had been filled with something like light; something so powerful it had reached out to Earth and shoved Dean aside.

Then there had been quiet: peacefulness, almost, until Dean had come. 

“I told him,” Dean said, softer, almost inaudible over the music. He was looking into the rearview mirror again, at Cas. “I knew it was you.”

Cas’s stomach did the weird flutter again. It was definitely a Dean Winchester thing.

* * *

**DEAN**

Every inch of Dean was tired and comfortable: they’d collapsed into bed as soon as they’d got back, and they hadn’t moved since. 

Every bit of him that was pressed against Cas sung, all while Cas snored loud and deep, did the world know Cas snored loud and deep? Dean knew it now. 

Every single cell was alive and in love, and Dean Winchester felt _all_ of it, and would for the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> snsknene.tumblr.com


End file.
